What Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said before testifying at today’s antitrust hearing

posted at 1:25 pm on September 21, 2011 by Tina Korbe

Google Chairman Eric E. Schmidt will testify at an antitrust hearing today before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. The subject of the hearing: “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” Not surprisingly, Google competitors — at least three of whom are also expected to testify — say the latter, claiming the company limits its competitors by favoring its own affiliated websites through its search engine. From my very preliminary reading on the subject (and from my very great reliance on Google on a daily basis), I tend to say the former.

But, for what it’s worth, Schmidt himself doesn’t seem concerned about the hearing whatsoever. He’s even said he’s looking forward to the “opportunity to communicate what [Google is] doing.” More than likely, he’s unconcerned because Google does serve its users well — but he might also be nonchalant because he’s covered his political bases. According toThe New York Times:

As antitrust scrutiny has intensified, Google has ramped up its lobbying efforts in Washington and its communications campaigns nationwide. The company has shown television ads in some markets … that trumpet Google’s role in helping small businesses and creating jobs.

“The economy is, today, stuck behind the power curve. It needs a lot of encouragement,” Schmidt told “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour. “It needs not just something like the jobs bill, but also significant government stimulation in terms of buying power and investment. Otherwise, we’re set up for years of extraordinarily low growth in the economy and no real solution to the jobless problem.” …

“You have a situation where the private sector sees essentially no growth in demand,” Schmidt said. “The classic solution is to have the government step in and, with short-term initiatives, help stimulate that demand. If they do it right, they’ll invest in income and growth-producing things, like highways and bridges and schools, new opportunities for the private sector to go then build businesses.”

I disagree with Schmidt on the need for short-term stimulus (the definition of insanity and all that), but I did, at least, appreciate the comments he made in favor of creative destruction:

Schmidt dismissed the idea that greater efficiency and new technology have created structural changes to the economy that have replaced workers unable to re-train for new higher-skilled jobs. …

“That’s been true for 100 years. It’s been true of the industrial era for the last, literally, century,” Schmidt said. “And over and over again, American ingenuity has meant that the people who were displaced were able to find new jobs in these new industries.

There’s every reason to believe that if the political system could come to a consensus around stability, solving these short-term problems and get the investment that I’m describing, that we can take care of the rest.”

In other words: No, Mr. President, ATMs did not cause our 9.1 percent unemployment. But Schmidt was careful to couple his praise for industrialization with a call for “investment,” that key word of the president’s. As well he should. He’s got a Democrat-led Senate subcommittee to win over.

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Eric Schmidt….

Gah.

Is there a decent replacement for Google based services? I have a gmail account I’d increasingly like to get rid of. But Hotmail and Yahoo suck. AOL? Don’t get me started. Is there anything else out there?

Speaking of Google, I read through a Drudge link that the gay campaign against Rick “Santorum” has finally reached the point they had hoped – instead of snide reactions or not talking about it, Rick is now sending letters to Google’s people telling them to get rid of the first 2-3-4 links that come up with a Google search, saying “they wouldn’t do this to Biden”. Biden? Oh, the VP spot.

Is there a decent replacement for Google based services? I have a gmail account I’d increasingly like to get rid of. But Hotmail and Yahoo suck. AOL? Don’t get me started. Is there anything else out there?

There are thousands if not millions of other choices out there.

Here’s the big question though. Are you exclusively looking for something that is free?

There is nothing out there for free. If you don’t want all of your data to be monetized and literally used against you, then you’re going to have to get away from the “free” services.

For approximately $20 dollars per year, you can have your own domain and email addresses on your own, and no one can come in and monetize them behind your back or use your own emails against you in advertising.

I’ve come to the conclusion that at least some billionaires are probably savants. Others are possibly just lucky or have a clear vision of the future at able to successfully capitalize on that vision. That’s how they get all that money.

I can see no evidence that they are more astute politically or economically.

So, their ramblings about what national policy should be are about as useful as an actor’s or a singer’s opinions.

Why use Google any way? I don’t buy that it is more helpful. To me it’s a pain because it pulls up crap I didn’t want. It’s way worse than others, such as Bing, for doing this. Bing is good as is Scroogle. As for Email I wouldn’t touch gmail with a ten foot pole, it was nothing but trouble. All of that and the Liberal CEO makes me pass on Google.

Google has demonstrated time and again that they will use their corporation to shill for the democratic party. For that one reason we should do all they can to limit their power, regardless of whether they are ‘serving consumers or threatening competition’.

Also remember that anytime you use services like Google docs, anything you create in that document can be used by Google for whatever they see fit.

That’s why a number of research universities have told researchers to NEVER put their data or their work into a Google-Doc. More than one university is fighting patent claims with google over work they’ve done and put into Google services to “aid in collaboration”.

Google lifted their work and filed patents on it. At least one of these patents involves work between USC and Green Cross of Japan that was conducted via google docs for real-time collaboration and now neither can continue their work because Google is claiming infringement.

Once you put ANYTHING into a “free” internet service, you lose almost all rights to it.

Run your business plan through Gmail, they can legally take it and use it. Load plans for your prototype into sketchup, Google now has rights to it.

There’s a great South Park episode about reading User Agreements. I’ll bet that most of the gmail users here have NO IDEA what they agreed to when they signed up.

Free accounts are fine. . . for things like signing up for message boards or frivolous internet activity, but if you’re going to do serious work or make an email address a part of your real identity, it’s best to avoid the “free” services.

Alright…well I am about to delete my Google account because all this privacy invasion business is insane. I think a lot of people are unawares because my dad was talking about how they were one of the top businesses to work for. Yea, working for spies is what I want to do.

Schmidt ain’t worried because he has a lot of Democratic politicians in his back pocket. If things start getting dicey, he’ll just drop a dime to his buddy Barry and say “Afraid I’ll have to hold off on those campaign contributions this year……..”

1) Find a registrar – this is a company like godaddy, network solutions, or the one I use, webula.

Domains should cost NO MORE than 10 a year, with coupons/specials, you can get them for as low as 3 a year.

That gives you rights to the domain to use as you see fit, nothing more. You own the domain for all respects and purposes.

2) Find a host – a host is someone who will put a server on the net for you and manage it physically. You then associate the domain with the host and you have a working domain of your own on the internet.

There are thousands upon thousands of hosts and resellers (hosts working for hosts) who you can use. Some are bare bones basic, some are fully automated.

Look at the big boys if you’re doing this for the first time, Dreamhost, 1&1 etc.

Note that most domain registrars are also hosts and most hosts also handle domain registration (godaddy and network solutions). I personally find that it’s better (and usually cheaper) to keep hosts and domain registrars separate so there’s less hassle if I want to change providers.

If you have more questions, email me at jason at jasoncoleman dot com.

Is there a decent replacement for Google based services? I have a gmail account I’d increasingly like to get rid of. But Hotmail and Yahoo suck. AOL? Don’t get me started. Is there anything else out there?

For approximately $20 dollars per year, you can have your own domain and email addresses on your own, and no one can come in and monetize them behind your back or use your own emails against you in advertising.

So what is it exactly that you want?
Jason Coleman on September 21, 2011 at 1:40 PM

More reasons to go with Jason’s reply:

1) Get your own dotCOM or dotUS domain from i.e. 1and1.com is British based, gives you some distance from US based ISPs IFKWIM.

2) A cheap plan will give you 10 or more email addresses – but that doesn’t matter, unless you want to parcel them out to family members or segregate business from personal emails.

3) the real beauty is the catchall mailbox. For example, make your personal the catchall; [email protected]. This addy is what your family, friends and trusted correspondents us, all others use a unique addy, see b) below
a) use Thunderbird/Outlook to handle emails via POP3 or IMAP
b) create unique emails on the fly for spam control and rules making. For example, you have accounts with TigerDirect, ChaseBank, HotAir, eBay, UnitedAirlines, Xoom etc. So when you sign up with each online outfit, just use their domain as your email addy specific to their registry as follows (doesn’t matter if it’s one or 10,000 on-the-fly accounts):–[email protected]–[email protected]–[email protected]–[email protected]–[email protected]–[email protected]

If you so wish, as these emails come in via your catchall, you can create rules to direct them into their own folders.

If for example, Xoom sells your addy to marketers or spammers against your wish, you now know who did it. You can jump on Xoom for doing so and set [email protected] as spam and automatically delete them henceforth. Or in the case of eBay, somehow spammers got a hold of my ebay addy via one of the sellers, so I just changed my ebay addy and set my filter to delete anything addressed to my old addy.

Same thing with a lot of the old-school blogs (they shall remain nameless) where your email addy was exposed to drivebys. I just set the filters to delete any incoming emails addressed to those aliases.

Like Jason said, $20 will bring you full control, privacy and greater peace of mind.

And don’t forget if you use Google Voice they can listen to any or all of the calls you place, and read your text messages.

Fezzik on September 21, 2011 at 2:08 PM

And Maps tracks your physical location and sells it, Picassa takes your pictures and sells them in stock libraries, Latitude correlates you with other users and associates for common advertisments, Calendar reports who, what and where you are meeting/doing.

The list is just too long to go through each service and explain how google takes whatever you give them and sells it.

I found this…
Interesting story really. Pretty quiet man who likes to spend on Dems. He really lost me at ACLU. Apparently the man is a ghost who used to donate to Republicans but has since ceased….a great mystery.

this from a company that makes outrageous amounts of money and pays next to no taxes-commenting on what the country needs. it’s not individual millionaires or 250,000- aires that are the problem and pay less than their share of taxes- it’s companies like google who do pay less than your secretary in taxes. seeing how they are people too, according to the likes of willard, how do they get away with it and get away from scrutiny,criticism, and condemnation as fat cats by the left and president pantywaist o’commie?

oh,they contribute to boy-king obama and paid for his inauguration. i see. at least in europe they’re being found in contempt of the civil rights of citizens for spying on them flagrantly, information mining from their robot camera cars and catching people in the all together in their own backyards. they are the liberal Stasi and the american left is them, loves them.

google is satan. all hail satan or you’re a racist.they’re double plus good.

Is there a decent replacement for Google based services? I have a gmail account I’d increasingly like to get rid of. But Hotmail and Yahoo suck. AOL? Don’t get me started. Is there anything else out there?

For approximately $20 dollars per year, you can have your own domain and email addresses on your own, and no one can come in and monetize them behind your back or use your own emails against you in advertising.

So what is it exactly that you want?
Jason Coleman on September 21, 2011 at 1:40 PM

More reasons to go with Jason’s reply:

1) Get your own dotCOM or dotUS domain from i.e. 1and1.com is British based, gives you some distance from US based ISPs IFKWIM.

2) A cheap plan will give you 10 or more email addresses – but that doesn’t matter, unless you want to parcel them out to family members or segregate business from personal emails.

3) the real beauty is the catchall mailbox. For example, make your personal the catchall; [email protected]. This addy is what your family, friends and trusted correspondents us, all others use a unique addy, see next post)

a) use Thunderbird/Outlook to handle emails via POP3 or IMAP
b) create unique emails on the fly for spam control and rules making. For example, you have accounts with TigerDirect, ChaseBank, HotAir, eBay, UnitedAirlines, Xoom etc. So when you sign up with each online outfit, just use their domain as your name part of the email addy, specific to their site as follows (doesn’t matter if it’s one or 10,000 on-the-fly accounts):–[email protected]

If you so wish, as these emails come in via your catchall, you can create rules to direct them into their own folders.

If for example, Xoom sells your addy to marketers or spammers against your wish, you now know who did it. You can jump on Xoom for doing so and set [email protected] as spam and automatically delete them henceforth. Or in the case of eBay, somehow spammers got a hold of my ebay addy via one of the sellers, so I just changed my ebay addy and set my filter to delete anything addressed to my old addy.

Same thing with a lot of the old-school blogs (they shall remain nameless) where your email addy was exposed to drivebys. I just set the filters to delete any incoming emails addressed to those aliases.

Like Jason said, $20 will bring you full control, privacy and greater.

Schmidt learned his lessons from Microsoft and Bill Gates very well. When Schmidt was CEO of Novell, Microsoft used their power as a monopoly to bring Novell to it’s knees. Schmidt took what he learned during his failure at Novell and used it at Google to go after Microsoft. Google is just as much a monopoly today as Microsoft was 15 years ago.

ESPECIALLY with email management. Being able to track the spam coming to you is a VERY difficult task, on-the-fly and company specific emails to your domain is a very good way to find out who’s being good and who’s being bad.

I’ve had some very interesting experiences calling up companies and explaining to them exactly how I was able to conclusively and legally determine that they were A)selling my information and B)spamming me from their partners.

They all try the same defense of “they could have gotten your email from anywhere”, but when confronted with unique emails to their particular service, they are forced to admit defeat.

Dell credited me for the entire cost of a new system with about 20 of work and 3 phone calls on my part to show that they gave my info to HP when I had specifically opted out. It helped that that particular email address I used for the purchase was email_used_only_for_new_dell_july_2010@(redacted domain).com

That last bit requires some more advanced saving of the data that leaves your computer and a bit of advance thinking, but it is possible. With free services it is near to impossible to track back who is doing what with your email/data.

That way, Eric, they can pay for your GOLDEN advice of: “The classic solution is to have the government step in and, with short-term initiatives, help stimulate that demand. If they do it right, they’ll invest in income and growth-producing things, like highways and bridges and schools, new opportunities for the private sector to go then build businesses.”

Google is just as much a monopoly today as Microsoft was 15 years ago.

huckleberryfriend on September 21, 2011 at 2:34 PM

There is no monopoly for Google, nor was there one with regard to Microsoft.

Is there some unfair competition going on, probably yes, but it’s not because of a monopoly.

Rather than being a monopoly problem, the particular issue here is that Google is manipulating results for their own benefit rather than presenting the results as they say they do.

If Google would come out and state that they definitely manipulate results into their favor when it suits them, fine, no problem. Presenting the results as pure search results when you aren’t doing that is the problem.

The Chairman of Progressive is Peter Lewis(his father was the co-founder.) Peter is a huge vonor to the Dems and the ACLU. He put as much money into MoveOn.org and America Coming Together as George Soros. He supports legalizing marijuana in a big way.
Let me put it this way, when you pay your Progressive premiums you’re helping all those organizations.

Since you avoided paying 3.1 billion in taxes over the past three years through a maze of questionable tax strategies, why not just come clean and pay what you truly owed?

You know, your “FAIR SHARE”?

A country’s tax system can’t be based on voluntary payments. That’s never worked in the history of the world and never will. Right wing whining about how left-leaning individuals or companies don’t engage in voluntary tax payments is childish.

Given the amount of profits generated by Google, Apple, and other tech companies with large offshore operations, closing those loopholes would make a significant impact on total revenues collected every year.

“It needs not just something like the jobs bill, but also significant government stimulation in terms of buying power and investment. Otherwise, we’re set up for years of extraordinarily low growth in the economy and no real solution to the jobless problem.” …
“You have a situation where the private sector sees essentially no growth in demand,” Schmidt said. “The classic solution is to have the government step in and, with short-term initiatives, help stimulate that demand.

Stick to your search engine. Your Keynesian 101 economic thoughts are even more pedantic than one would expect, coming from someone who runs a business fueled completely by capitalistic freedom.

“Government stimulation in terms of buying power” ~ Let’s keep this simple. That phrase means money in the hands of someone who plans to spend it, whether a business or an individual. Of course, you get there by taking more of their money in taxes, right? Wrong.

“Otherwise, we’re set up for years of extraordinarily low growth in the economy” ~ Again, low growth in the economy is primarily due to lack of spending, but that does NOT mean government spending, it means capital investments in business expansion, and private consumption of goods.

How did Google grow to include over 25,000 active CPUs, then 50,000 active CPUs, etc? Was it through government manipulated stimulation? No, stupid, it was because there was a DEMAND, one which Google met through their SUPPLY of technological infrastructure. People got the information they craved, advertisers saw that people gathered there, so they invested in Google via advertising, and EVERYBODY gained, with no government involvement at all.

Guys like this run their business as capitalists, but think of everything outside of that through their wishful-thinking worldview. Since that makes them liberal, they side with the Democrats, and then they just have to believe that supply-side economic principles are EVIL, even while they are banking the results of the purely supply-side behavior of their own business.

+1. I have officially now bookmarked a hotair thread because of useful technical info. Weird.

rogerb on September 21, 2011 at 5:29 PM

Don’t hesitate to ask if you have questions.

I’ve had a good experience with 1&1 for their one-stop solution. All you need is their cheapest package and skip (not use) the webpage stuff, unless you want to fool with maybe hosting photos and stuff which can be done behind a password firewall w/o the whole world seeing it.

There are some free tools via CNET.com to do photo albums and the like for sharing videos, photos, music, even blogging. Again, this way you can control your content. Naturally, you may have to upgrade the package depending on your storage needs.